undefined | Better HN

0 pointsrafaelmn2mo ago0 comments

Your battery is going to suffer because of the extra ram as well.

I don't know your workloads, but for me personally 64 GB is the ceiling buffer on RAM - I can run entire k8s cluster locally with that and the M5 Pro with top cores is same CPU as M5 Max. I don't need the GPU - the local AI story and OSS models are just a toy for my use-cases and I'm always going to shell out for the API/frontier capabilities. I'm even thinking of 48 config because they already have those on 8% discounts/shipped by Amazon and I never hit that even on my workstation with 64 GB.

0 comments

4 comments · 2 top-level

zozbot2342mo ago· 2 in thread

> Your battery is going to suffer because of the extra ram as well.

No, it won't. The power drain of merely refreshing DRAM is negligible, it's no higher than the drain you'd see in S3 standby over the same time period.

3form2mo ago

Given the DRAM refresh is part of S3 standby, I'm afraid this is circular reasoning.

cduzz2mo ago

I suspect this is one of those "it depends" situations; does the 128gb vs 64gb sku have more chips or denser chips? If "more chips" probably it'll draw a tiny bit more power than the smaller version. If the "denser" chips, it may be "more power draw" but such a tiny difference that it's immaterial.

Similarly, having more cache may mean less SSD activity, which may mean less energy draw overall.

If I had a chip to put on the roulette table of this "what if" I'd put it on the "it won't make a difference in the real world in any meaningful way" square.

ryandrake2mo ago

I thought my Z620 with 128GB of RAM was excessive! Actually, HP says they support up to 192GB of RAM, but for whatever reason the machine won't POST with more than 128GB (4Rx4) in it. Flawed motherboard?

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse